Re: Tom Tom and Microsofts Linux patent lock-down ..

[Hyman Rosen]

amicus_curious wrote:
> You are departing from the party line by a wide margin here!

I am under no obligation to hew to a party line.

> How do you suppose that the SFLC could be so "overly expansive" as to 
> put their statements into the form of a lawsuit?

Their lawsuit was not overly expansive. Verizon was shipping routers
containing GPLed code without honoring the GPL, and the SFLC sought to
stop that by invoking copyright infringement. Whether Verizon could
have invoked a first sale defense would depend on the details of the
business relationship between Verizon and its router manufacturers.
But as usual, the defendants did not bother coming up with a defense
that would allow them to not provide source, because providing source
is so much easier.

Now that Verizon actually complies with the GPL, GPL-skeptics are poring
over the details trying to imply that the GPL is still being violated,
completely ignoring the fact of the major cure - before the suit no source
was made available, after the suit it is.

> Well Verizon is distributing GPL based products without Verizon 
> acknowledging the GPL.

This is false. The Verizon-branded manual which ships with the routers
acknowledges the GPL, as does the accompanying disk.
<http://support.actiontec.com/doc_files/MI424WR_Rev._E_User_Manual_20.8.0_v3.pdf>
    C.4 GPL (General Public License)
    This product includes software code developed by third parties,
    including software code subject to the enclosed GNU General Public
    License (GPL) or GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The GPL
    Code and LGPL Code used in this product are distributed WITHOUT ANY
    WARRANTY and are subject to the copyrights of the authors, and to
    the terms of the applicable licenses included in the download. For
    details, see the GPL Code and LGPL Code for this product and the
    terms of the GPL and the LGPL, which are available on the enclosed
    product disk and can be accessed by inserting the disk into your
    CD-ROM drive and opening the “GPL.exe” file.

> You can say that Verizon is somehow the same as Actiontec, but you are
> not to be believed.

Actiontec is the manufacturer of Verizon's routers, and makes the GPLed
sources for the software properly available. Before the lawsuit, they
did not do this. Now, anyone who receives a FiOS router from Verizon may
run, read, modify, and share the code it comes with. Before the lawsuit,
they could not do this.